DSK sexual assault charges dismissed

Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sexual-assault case was thrown out by a Manhattan judge after his accuser was found to have lied about events surrounding the alleged attack.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus today granted District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s request to dismiss the indictment. Mr. Obus earlier rejected the accuser’s bid for a special prosecutor in the case. An appeals court this afternoon refused to reverse that decision.

The dismissal came about three months after Mr. Strauss-Kahn, once a potential French presidential candidate, was pulled off a flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport on May 14 and arrested for allegedly attempting to rape a hotel maid.

The experience has been “a nightmare for me and my family,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, said in a statement after Mr. Obus ruled. “We are obviously gratified that the district attorney agreed with my lawyers that this case had to be dismissed. We appreciate his professionalism and that of the people who were involved in that decision.”

The accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, told police that Mr. Strauss-Kahn attacked her when she went to clean his suite at the Sofitel in midtown Manhattan. During an investigation, Mr. Diallo, 33, admitted to lying about the circumstances of the incident and other matters. Prosecutors said those lies made it impossible to pursue the case. Kenneth Thompson, a lawyer for Mr. Diallo, accused Mr. Vance today of abandoning his client.

“The complainant was untruthful with us in nearly every substantive interview,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said in court today. “She was untruthful about matters great and small in significance.”

Mr. Obus didn’t say when Mr. Strauss-Kahn will be able to return to France, where investigators are probing allegations that he tried to rape French writer Tristane Banon eight years ago, a claim he has denied. He will also have to defend a civil suit Ms. Diallo filed in New York state court seeking unspecified damages.

Evidence collected by New York investigators established that Mr. Strauss-Kahn engaged in “a hurried sexual encounter” with the maid, “but it does not independently establish her claim of a forcible, nonconsensual encounter,” prosecutors said in a court filing yesterday requesting the dismissal.

Prosecutors said Ms. Diallo gave three different accounts of what happened immediately after the encounter at the Sofitel, and admitted to lying to the grand jury, something defense lawyers could have used against her at a criminal trial. Prosecutors said she told investigators a fictitious tale, “with great emotion and conviction,” about how she was gang-raped by soldiers in her native Guinea.

“In a case where a complainant is accusing a defendant of a sexual assault, the fact that she has given a prior false account of a different sexual assault is highly relevant,” the prosecutors said.

They said Ms. Diallo also repeatedly asserted that she wouldn’t try to make money off of the case, only to sue Mr. Strauss-Kahn this month. She failed to disclose $60,000 in cash deposits made into her checking account by individuals in four different states, and she lied about her job to obtain low-income housing, prosecutors said.

“If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot ask a jury to do so,” prosecutors said.

Robert Morgenthau, a Manhattan district attorney for 34 years and now of counsel at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York, said in a statement that, although he hasn’t reviewed the case, he believed Mr. Vance and his staff conducted their investigation “in accordance with established procedure.”

“They are not afraid of making tough or unpopular decisions,” said Mr. Morgenthau. “If they have determined that the prosecution cannot win the case, their judgment not to go forward is not only wise, as a matter of policy, but required under the relevant rules as a matter of prosecutorial ethics.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn was a leading contender to run for president of France before his arrest. Other Socialist candidates for his party’s nomination said it was for him to decide whether to return to politics.

“I would like to leave it to him to express his views” on his political future, Martine Aubry, a candidate for the Socialist presidential nomination, said today on France Info.

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